Friday, July 13, 2007

Lance let it drop. “What do you think are the chances we'll be able to catch the probe.”Now, Andrea went into professional mode. This was a question she'd been thinking about since they'd confirmed the probe's trajectory. “Pretty good, actually. We've got several scenarios we're thinking of right now. During the committee meeting, we'll finalize the one we think will work the best, and then the shuttle will be up to implement it with a couple of days to spare. I anticipate it going really well.”Lance grinned, an evil little smirk. “You realize that the day it's going to connect with the shuttle is Friday the 13th?”“Just another day.”“Wasn't that what the guy in Apollo 13 said?”“No, he said 13 was just another number,” she corrected him. “Friday the 13th is going to be lucky for us.”He nodded and sipped at his soda. “That's a good quote. Mind if I get my cameraman over here to film you saying that?”She looked over at the cameraman, who was wolfing down a plate piled high with her relatives' food. “Don't you think that's a little staged?”“These things always are. How do you think the good soundbites get out there?”Andrea chuckled and shook her head. “You're going to destroy my faith in the system.”“Then my work here is done,” Lance said, walking over to where the cameraman was enjoying the company of two of Andrea's cousins while he ate. They spoke briefly, and the cameraman reluctantly got up and readied his equipment. When they saw that Andrea was about to be filmed, several relatives started drifting over to place themselves conveniently in the background. She got a little nervous; she'd appeared on camera a couple of times already, but it wasn't the kind of thing she'd signed on for when she made her career choice. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to zen out. The camera pointed at her and Lance pulled out the wireless mike and asked her, “Doctor Ross, you realize that the shuttle's going to connect with the probe on Friday the 13th?”“Just another day.” She remembered her line – he smiled at her.“Wasn't that what Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13?”He had modified his line; what a professional. “No, he said 13 was just another number. Friday the 13th is going to be a lucky day for us.”“Cut,” Lance said the cameraman, who stopped recording and lowered the camera. Andrea's family all applauded, and Lance waved at them. Andrea dropped her head, embarrassed. “Good job, doc. I think we'll probably wander around a bit and get some background on you from your folks, here.”“All right,” she said, “just don't eat too much.”

In 2009, TV networks ran episode four of So What If?. Enoch Powell's apocalyptic warnings of Rivers of Blood proves all too prescient. The Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher sends an elite force of Royal Marines and Paratroopers to cauterize the Channel Tunnel. Before Colonel H Jones can detonate the bomb at Sangatte, the British position is overrun by vampires. Held at bay since 1917, the Red Menace finally swept into Britain.

"Just another empty gesture with an empty glassJust another comic actor behind a tragic maskBut I've got no discipline got no self controlJust a little less painful here when my back's against the wallIt's too late, I found, it's too far, I'm in two minds, both of them are out of it at the barWhen you say I got a problem that's a certaintyBut I can put it all right down to eccentricity

Fish

It's just for the record it's just a passing phaseJust for the record I can stop any day. Just for the record I'm gonna change my life around "~Lyrics to Just for the Record

"We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves...

Lyndon Johnson

... I told [the Generals] to let Vietnam go the way of China. And then I want ‘em to leave me alone, because I’ve got some bigger things to do right here at home." ~ Address at at Akron University, Ohio Oct. 21, 1964.

President

On Oct. 21, 1964 at Akron University, Ohio LJB overturned the Truman Doctrine and the Domino Theory to rationalise his non-intervention strategy in Vietnam. Despite provocations such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Johnson pursued a domestic agenda and built the “Great Society” through to re-election in 1964 and 1968. A transcript of Johnson's speech is described at Bartleby

"Why, twenty years after his death and forty years after the end of World War II, do we have Hitler Defeated, an anthology of eleven stories set in various alternative worlds in which the, uh, Iron Dream of Nazi Germany ends in the rubble of the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin?" ~ Norman Spinard

Murderer

Benford & Greenberg present a whole series of futures made possible by the plausible premise of a defeated Ten-Year Reich. The Amazon Review is available at Amazon.com Review

"May I have your attention please?Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?Jaws all on the floor like Pam, like Tommy just burst in the doorand started whoopin her worse than before

Eminem

... they first were divorce, throwin her over furniture (Ahh!)It's the return of the... Ah, wait, no way, you're kidding, he didn't just say what I think he did, did he?" ~ Eminem's Says His Name in 1998.

Rapper

Gangsta rapper and producer Dr. Dre discovered a demo tape to Shady EP floating around Interscope label president Jimmy Iovine's office. Unable to contact Eminem in Los Angeles, Dre was shocked to discover that the young artist real name Marshall Bruce Mathers III had recently died of a massive drug overdose.

He also discovered that the young artist suffered from a multiple personality disorder. "He had reached a boiling point, doing a lot of drugs and messed up stuff because he was so depressed," his wife said later. "There were at least three people in our apartment, my husband Marshall Bruce Mathers III, the frustrated artist Eminem and also the narcotics loaded alter-ego Slim Shady." A transcript of Eminem's story is told at The Moments

In 1962, Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey published a semi-fictional novel “Seven Days in May”, later adapted into a 1964 film with screenplay by Rod Serling and directed by John Frankenheimer. The scenario of the film may have been inspired by the clash between General Curtis LeMay and President John F. Kennedy. ..

.. LeMay, furious after the Cuba crisis for not being allowed to use his atomic bombs, removed the President from power. A later film, Thirteen Days, refers to this clash; in it, LeMay is directly quoted as calling Kennedy a traitor to the United States. “Seven Days in May” poses the question – what would have happened to America if LeMay's bold action had not been taken, and Kennedy indeed had surrendered to Secretary Khruschev?

In 1985, septuagenarian President Ronald Reagan underwent eight hours of surgery to remove polyps from his colon. George H.W. Bush became the first Vice President to become Acting President which was just as well because Reagan expired during the surgery. Bush was sworn in following a short delay in which the Acting President, ..

Oliver North

.. Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North and his secretary Fawn Hall performed some routine maladministration. They criminally shredded pertinent documents relating to the arms sales to Iran which funded Contra militants in Nicaragua. They were securing the Gipper's reputation, they figured.

In 1912, Leader of the Indian freedom movement and scholar, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (free) brought out his noted Urdu news journal, al-Hilal. Azad would serve as Congress President from 1940 to 1945, during which the Quit India rebellion was launched. Alongside Mahatma Gandhi, Azad was imprisoned for three years and ..

.. then executed with the entire Congress leadership. Churchill meant it when he said he would not preside over the end of the British Empire. Adrienne Gormley recounted the true story in her brilliant 1996 biography "Children of Tears".

In 1948, the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches reached an agreement leading to the promotion of the Ethiopian church to the rank of an autocephalous Patriarchate. It was entirely reasonable, for thousands of years the Ethiopians had kept the Ark of the Covenant under constant guard in a "treasury" near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion.

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